The case against Rebekah Brooks is a 'pantomime', the phone-hacking trial has been told. Photograph: Mark Thomas/Rex Features

Rebekah Brooks is an "arch-criminal" starring in a "pantomime" also involving her "lying" secretary, mother, husband and head of security, if the prosecution case against her is to be believed, the phone-hacking trial has been told.

Her defence lawyer, Jonathan Laidlaw QC, said that if the crown's claim that she concealed material from police is true, then she would have made an extraordinary confession to her husband.

She would also have had to have asked him to "chuck" some stuff in the river and to have asked her mother to come to court to tell lies under oath.

Laidlaw asked the jury to imagine the conversation she would have had with her husband, who has also been charged with concealing material from the police on the day of her arrest in 2011.

"It would have gone like this: 'Darling, I hope you don't mind, but I've got a confession to make to you, I know you thought I'm a really nice person when you married me, I'm in fact a serial criminal. It's true. I'm a serial criminal – I'm up to my neck in all old sorts of trouble. I sanctioned the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone and lots of other people's phones too.'"

Laidlaw said she would then have to have told her husband and the News International head of security, Mark Hanna, who has also been charged with perverting the course of justice.

"'Of course none of this to do with you Charlie ... But could you take a few of my electronic devices and could you or Mark Hanna chuck them in the river on your way down tomorrow? I'd be really grateful if you wouldn't mind doing that.'"

Laidlaw said this was the kind of conversation hardened criminals would have had if they were "disposing of a corpse or concealing a large stash of drugs from the police" and not something one could imagine happening between the Brookses, who clearly loved each other.

"How would anyone ever go about have that kind of conversation with your husband?" Laidlaw said.

Laidlaw described the prosecution case against Brooks as "absurd" and "beyond ridiculous" and said if she really had perverted the course of justice she would also have to ask her mother to lie under oath.

"Sat her down and said something like 'Mum, you may think I'm lovely but I'm a criminal I need you to come to court and lie your head off to get me out of trouble. I need you to lie on oath."

He said she would also have to have asked her mother, who gave evidence about her a breakfast she helped cook for Hanna on the day of her daughter's arrest, to invent some colourful detail to impress jurors.

"'You need you to lie about the 17th [July 2011]. Could you throw in a little lie about cooking bacon with Mark Hanna, I really think that would go down a treat with the jury.'"

Laidlaw, in the second day of his closing speech, said the "prosecution's propensity for writing fiction had reached new heights".

He said he had already told the jury that it had lost its way, but they should now take into account that it had also lost its "grip on reality about how human beings think and feel".

It said it was "beyond ridiculous the prosecution is trying to make you buy this fantastic tale of what she did and the people she corrupted."

He said Charlie Brooks hid pornography from the police in the underground car park at their Chelsea Harbour home for entirely innocent reasons.

"Charlie as you can see loves his wife, his wife was a public figure in 2011 – she was a reviled public figure.

"In his flat he had some porn, not just any old porn, but porn that might form the basis of some very embarrassing headlines against his wife – Lesbian Psychodramas volumes 1 and 4 – he loves his wife, stupid as that seems. Mr Brooks took the risk of hiding these to protect, in his words to you, to protect his wife from a Jacqui Smith moment."

He said the allegation that Brooks got her secretary Cheryl Carter to retrieve seven boxes of notebooks from the News International archive to destroy evidence that she was involved in hacking was absurd.

He said that if it were true that Brooks was involved in hacking, why did she not destroy these notebooks back in 2006 when the News of the World's royal editor Clive Goodman was arrested, or in 2009 when the Guardian reported allegations of widespread hacking on the Sunday tabloid, or on 4 July 2011, when the Guardian reported the hacking of Milly Dowler's phone.

"All of a sudden, according to the prosecution on 8 July, Mrs Brooks is sufficiently woried about these notebooks to ask Mrs Carter to go down to the archive to retreive them and destroy them," Laidlaw said.

"And what prompted her to do this? The closure of the News of the World. it is nothing short of ridiculous," Laidlaw said.

Laidlaw told the jury that it was "perfectly entitled to think Mrs Brooks made mistakes in response to the phone-hacking scandal", but these did not amount to crime.

He said her response to phone hacking was motivated by a desire to "prevent further damage to the company", adding: "She was not acting to prevent further damage to her personally."

Earlier in the second day of his closing speech, Laidlaw accused the prosecution of relying on lying witnesses to press home its case. He urged the jury to ignore the testimony of Eimear Cook, the ex-wife of the golfer Colin Montgomerie.

"She was a liar and the prosecution and the police should have known that," he said.

He reminded jurors that Cook had claimed Brooks had told her over lunch of her arrest for the alleged assault of her then husband, Ross Kemp, in September 2005. In that same lunch she had said Brooks had openly told how her easy it was to hack the mobile phones of stars such as Sir Paul McCartney.

Brooks was not arrested until November 2005 so it was impossible this was a topic of conversation at that lunch, the jury were told.

Laidlaw said it was the prosecution team's fault for not checking the facts before it brought Cook as a witness.

"It is not just a lie, but a lie cynically told to set the ground for what is to come in a quite false account. By that route, she was going to suggest the laughing, chatty Mrs Brooks confessed to phone hacking to a complete stranger," Laidlaw said.

"If she lied to you about Mrs Brooks regaling the story of her arrest, something that had not yet happened, you certainly can't believe a word she says about Mrs Brooks and phone hacking.

"Why call this witness to give evidence when a cursory examination of facts would have established that she was lying about Mrs Brooks?"

The McCartney story inferred by the prosecution to have come from hacking came from a tip-off and this had been confirmed by journalist Annette Witheridge who had flown over from New York to London to testify for the defence. "Her evidence was straightforward and truthful," Laidlaw said.

He said the lead prosecutor considered the evidence against Brooks too literally. "Not for the first time Mr Edis is thinking a little bit too much like a lawyer and not like a human being," said Laidlaw.